Defying Hardships, British Minister Is in Spotlight

By WARREN HOGE

Published: July 10, 2002

LONDON, July 9—
In five years in office, the Labor government has been a two-man show, with Gordon Brown, the strong-willed treasurer, exercising power independently of Prime Minister Tony Blair and positioning himself as Mr. Blair's sure successor.

Now a third person, David Blunkett, the government's chief law enforcement official, has stepped into the center ring, generating talk of an alternative future prime minister.

Remarkable as it is that anyone could become a front-runner in an administration so dominated by Mr. Blair and Mr. Brown, Mr. Blunkett's rise is all the more noteworthy for another reason. He is blind.

As home secretary, he pursues attention-getting concerns like illegal immigration, crime, terrorism, race relations and police and prison reform with an assertiveness that produces daily headlines. His success at rising above his handicap has made him an outspoken advocate of discipline and self-reliance and shaped him into a social policy hard-liner in the very law and order areas where center-left parties like Labor are being accused by voters across Europe of not being tough enough.

He has been given a freedom to speak his mind that Mr. Blair permits no one else in his cabinet except Mr. Brown; Mr. Blunkett has exercised the liberty with gusto.

''If we're not careful,'' he told a gathering of foreign correspondents recently, ''we could end up with public officials who act, speak and move the same way, with little or no spontaneity.'' Whether by design or not, the characterization matches what the British often scorn in relentlessly on-message Blair government officials.

Inevitably these days, Mr. Blunkett is asked whether he wants to be Britain's leader, and he told the reporters: ''I've seen the prime minister's job up close, and it's absolutely horrendously demanding, both personally and professionally. Besides, if there were to be an election anytime soon -- and there won't be -- I wouldn't win it.''

He said the job was not the objective he had in mind as he went about his duties. Still, he has not been shy with the public, having written an autobiography as well as a book, ''Politics and Progress,'' on reconnecting voters with politicians.

His Web site -- www.davidblunkett.org.uk -- announces itself grandly as an ''opportunity to understand more about the ideas and experiences that have shaped my values and philosophy.''

It is well known that Mr. Brown, 51, has a burning desire to move up from chancellor of the exchequer to prime minister, and a broad body of followers stand ready to campaign for him when they hope Mr. Blair, 49, will step aside and give him his chance.

Mr. Blunkett, 55, has no such team in place and says he has no such yearning to see Mr. Blair go. He has nevertheless consistently confounded people who believe there are limits to what a blind person can do.

He calls his blindness ''an inconvenience, not a disability.'' Born that way to devoted parents in Sheffield, the city he now represents in Parliament, he had a childhood marked by deep deprivation. From the age of 4 he had to board at a school for the blind, and when he was only 12, his father, a gasworks foreman, fell into a vat of boiling water and spent the next month dying an agonizing death.

Mr. Blunkett says he can still remember the smell of burned flesh from his bedside visits.

The East Midlands Gas Board denied the family compensation, plunging them into what Mr. Blunkett has called ''bread and drippings'' poverty.

He worked his way beyond a school curriculum aimed at preparing him to be a piano tuner -- which was thought then to be a fitting occupation for a blind person -- and ended up with an honors degree in political theory from Sheffield University. Joining the Labor Party at 16, he became a Sheffield city councillor at 22 and leader of the council at 33. In 1987 he entered Parliament.

During his tenure on the Sheffield City Council, it was considered so radical that it was known as the Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire, but today he is often accused of being more conservative than the Conservatives. This all adds to his credentials as an exponent of New Labor's stated goal of blurring the distinctions between right and left.

As education secretary, he was regarded as the star performer in Mr. Blair's first-term cabinet. The principal complaint against the Blair government has been that its delivery and its promises do not match, but the critics have spared Mr. Blunkett, who managed to achieve noticeable change by cutting class sizes and setting literacy and numeracy standards that bolstered primary school test scores.

He is undeterred by the frequent criticisms from Labor's left-wing legislators, civil liberties groups and rights campaigners. He has derided ''airy-fairy civil liberties,'' predicted that the children of asylum-seekers would ''swamp'' classrooms if allowed into mainstream schools, and faulted immigrants for not living up to ''British norms of acceptability.''

He told the House of Commons last week that the government was thinking of introducing the first identity card for Britons since wartime, explaining away libertarian objections with the comment, ''There is nothing to fear from our own identity being properly acknowledged and recognized.''

He often rebuts opponents in a prickly and combative fashion, accusing the British press, for instance, of being ''on the brink of insanity.''

But recently he did something even more surprising for a minister in a government frequently criticized as unaccountable and arrogant: he admitted error.

Abandoning a plan for sweeping extension of state access to e-mails and mobile phone calls, he said, ''We got it wrong.'' Explaining why he had backed down, he said, ''When you're in a hole, you should stop digging.''

In general, Mr. Blunkett avoids easy categorization by, for example, proposing detention centers for asylum seekers and recommending that immigrants take British-born spouses -- while at the same time moving to relax laws on marijuana use, modernize Britain's ''antiquated'' laws on sexual behavior and reduce prison terms.

He led the post-Sept. 11 fight to pass a tough law permitting indefinite detention of foreigners suspected of terror connections. He is now guiding legislation through Parliament permitting swift deportation of failed asylum seekers.

He makes a joke of his blindness whenever he can. He says, for instance, that he has the advantage of being able to read in bed without the light on or that he is the only politician who can read his speech while looking at the audience.

When a questioner at a recent lunch sought his view of a new project abolishing traffic lights in a Dutch community, he said, ''I guess they don't have many people there walking around with guide dogs, do they.''

He is primed by taped briefings from aides, which he plays speeded up, having trained himself to comprehend their high-pitched, cartoon animal tones. He reads using his fingers, highlighting portions of speeches he wants to quote directly with small rips in the Braille sheet.

Since he and his wife, Ruth, the mother of his three sons, divorced in 1990, he has apparently led a solitary life, with almost all free hours devoted to the time-consuming duty of listening to his tapes, committing material to his formidable memory and typing on his Braille machine. His 1995 memoir, ''On a Clear Day,'' took note of this with a sad index entry: ''Fun, lack of.''

But he has a sense of humor and his black Labrador, Lucy, is often the foil for jokes. When photographers in Sheffield complained that Lucy wouldn't face them but kept showing them her bottom instead, Mr. Blunkett said, ''Maybe she's trying to tell you something.''

Photo: David Blunkett with Lucy. He calls his blindness ''an inconvenience, not a disability.'' (Jonathan Player for The New York Times)